ELT Ideas 06 - Macmillan Education

Ken Wilson
strana 6 z 6
Ken Wilson is a teacher trainer and an author of ELT materials with more than 20 titles to his name, including Move Ahead, the five-level
series for upper primary and secondary published by Macmillan. His other Macmillan book projects include New Standard English, an
11-level Senior High series for China and Prospects, a six-level secondary school course for Central Europe. He is also co-author of
English Sketches, two books which contain transcripts of 32 sketches by the English Teaching Theatre, and accompanying drama
material.
In addition to print materials, he has written more than 100 radio and TV programmes for BBC English, including 50 radio scripts for the
Follow Me series and 30 Look Ahead TV scripts. Until 2002, Ken was artistic director of the English Teaching Theatre, a company which
toured the world performing stage-shows for learners of English. The ETT made more than 250 tours to 55 countries, in Europe, Latin
America, Africa and the Far East. The stage-show was discontinued in 2002 but ETT performers continue to give drama workshops and
courses all over the world.
Ken is a regular at IATEFL and TESOL conferences around the world, usually giving workshops on music and drama in ELT. He has
also given conference plenary talks in many countries. including Argentina, Brazil, China, Greece, Korea, Turkey and almost
everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe.He has worked as a writer and adviser on ELT television projects in many different countries,
including Poland, Portugal and the Netherlands. He wrote and presented a series of drama training programmes for Polish TV, which
was first broadcast in 1997 and has been shown several times since. In 2005, he worked on UK TV Channel 4's first-ever ELT TV
series, Extra English.
Wilson, Ken
Macmillan
Target audience: all
Chair, charity, charismatic – does the method of teaching new words change as
the students move up a level
Teaching vocabulary is pretty important - you can't do anything without words, and students won't make any progress without a
constant stream of new ones. But for some students, words get harder the more you learn. Why should this be It is because more
complex words are more difficult to learn Or is it that we aren't teaching them right Why is it that young learners seem to remember
how to use simple words like 'chair' very easily, whereas older learners might know what words like 'charity' and 'charisma' mean, but
can't pronounce them correctly, don't know the adjectival forms and can't collocate them Is it simply a matter of teaching collocations
rather than words Or do we need to go back to primary level, and remember what it was that made words so memorable for younger
learners Most important - how can we get the students actively involved in learning new words And what can we do to help
students memorise words
Target audience: US, PLS
Having fun with active grammar
In this workshop, Ken looks at grammar in the same way he looked at vocabulary in his plenary. He will try to show how you can
make grammar more active and involving for the students. He will show how to devolve more responsibility onto the students for input
lessons and turn grammar teaching into a dialogue of discovery. We will look at ways of exploiting the abilities that students have (and
teachers often don't) to draw pictures, to mime, to indicate emotions with facial expressions, to make sounds and to act as trees. Yes -
act as trees. I promise it will all make sense!
Target audience: all
Giving something extra
Grammar, vocabulary, tests, exams - is that all there is to English classes Thankfully not! There are lots of extra activities, designed
especially to fill those moments when energy levels (of teachers and students) are low. . Every teacher needs a portfolio of extra
ideas to waste, sorry, to FILL a little time here and there. Today, Ken will try to add 10 brilliant ideas to your list of extra time-fillers.